MovieChat Forums > The Company You Keep (2013) Discussion > What a revolting idea for a film

What a revolting idea for a film

posted 12 years ago by srousecc
112 replies | jump to latest

Hello,

Now I know I may well be beat up for this but here is my sense of the film.

Now mind you I did read the book it was based on.(I wish I could take back that time I spent reading it) So here are some of my thoughts on the book and from viewing the trailer what the film will attempt to do.

This is an amoral and immoral book, with worse pseudo-historical nonsense than all of Oliver Stone's movies put together.

The "Weathermen" were spoiled, dangerous brats, who fortunately never got more than miniscule attention and support. When others didn't adopt their agenda upon its announcement, they went violent and started bombing without regard to the consequences.

The author uses lots of cheap tricks to try to make them suitable protagonists. One is to announce, repeatedly, that anyone who got violent was automatically expelled from the Weatherman the second he or she did so -- never mind that they instigated it all.

Then there's the guilty revolutionary who sends money anonymmously to her victim's family (never happened), and another who is sugar-coated as the world's best parent to try to gin up some faux sympathy.

Every 20 pages or so the author shoves a political tract in your face by having the journalist character make a political speech about how the Weathermen were really just premature ecologists (which they never cared about) and the violence was excusable...

This is a trendy left political pamphlet disguised (thinly) as fiction. (The author likes to weave back and forth between real characters and his fictional ones). It is a revolting attempt to rewrite history.

Of course this is just my opinion, this is what makes the US so great, we have room for different points of view, lets just not mix in violence and terrorism.

[–] Tweck 11 years ago

The film was about sacrificing your egotism and selfish desires to help others and attain a higher ethical synergy with the world. It wasn't about whether or not the weather underground were right or wrong. In fact, Redford's character suggested that their actions were wrong. You're making a politically biased assessment of the film, and missing the point of it. It wasn't about politics at all, it was about people coming to terms with their own humanity.

Oh wait, you didn't watch the movie, and yet are making high-and-mighty assessments of the book it's based on. NEVER MIND.

[–] irvberg2002 11 years ago

The Weathermen were more than "spoiled, dangereous brats." They were vicious totalitarians whose core outlook was neatly summed up by one of their leaders, Bernardine Dohrn, who expressed her feeling about the Manson family murders of Sharon Tate, in her last month of pregnancy, and her friends by saying to her weather audience: "Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate their dinner in the same room with them, then they even stuck a fork into the pig Tate's stomach. Wild!" The last reference was in regard to the deliberate murder of Tate's unborn child. These are the monsters for whom Redford has so much admiration and who he whitewashes in his disgusting film.

[–] davexist 11 years ago

Wow, it's amazing you know Redford's feelings and motives. Please, tell us more...

[–] irvberg2002 11 years ago

Nothing amazing about it. All you need to do is watch the film and see/hear what he has to say. You can tell a lot from the company someone chooses to keep, both literally and figuratively. Redford doesn't try to keep his feelings and motives a secret. He's quite open with his admiration of the creepy Weathermen.

[–] tigerbos 10 years ago

Wow what insight you possess. Can I borrow your crystal ball?

I'll tell you in another life when we are both cats.

[–] canadamelody 10 years ago

The Manson murders of Polanski's family had nothing to do with politics. Roman Polanski himself has said that he did his own research and investigations and found that Manson targeted the house because the owner was a record producer who had rejected Manson's approaches to get into the music business. Polanski and Tate by sheer freak of fate were renting the house and Manson and his zombies did not know this. The Manson directed murders had nothing whatsoever to do with the Weather Underground or any other such group.

[–] irvberg2002 10 years ago

Canadamelody, to which post are you replying? I have not seen any that claimed that the Manson gang was politically motivated (except in the very broadest sense that Manson imagined he could ignite a race war resulting in the ascendance of his gang - see Bugliosi's Helter Skelter). The point of my post is that one of the leaders of the Weathermen -Bernardine Dorhn - reveled in the viciousness of the Manson murders in addressing her Weather comrades, who are whitewashed in Redford's film. Would you please address that?

[–] canadamelody 10 years ago

There is a post on here somewhere maybe I got two conversations mixed up but there is one. Sorry if its misplaced.

[–] JTremblay2010 11 years ago

What's truly revolting are the millions of deaths of civilians in useless wars started by the US in countries like Vietnam and Iraq.

[–] ciprianl 11 years ago

Thanks, you've just made me want to see this movie.

[–] smfilm 11 years ago

IMO, the film states that the idea behind the Weathermen's violence was wrong and that they should pay for their actions... that whatever happened since, whether they had families or not etc. didn't matter.

It lays a fictional chase over the reality and educates us about the Weathermen and the issues around them. Lastly it points out how broken news reporting is.

I don't see how you could interpret it as glorifying the Weathermen or their cause. They end up in jail and recognizing how their modus operandi was wrong in the face of real priorities in life.

So, the message for me was, there are better ways than violence, family is more important than anything, and news reporting in the US isn't doing it's job.

I think everyone is quick to say: Redford is in it, so it must be a far leftist hunk o crap... which is very wrong in this case

[–] jake-ryan1968 10 years ago

Very well said. These '60s assassins who thrilled at 'playing war' by bombing and shooting innocent civilians are still among us. Now in positions of power or with friends in high places of power. Rich brat bombers like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are close friends of Obama and his top stooge Valerie Jarrett, all four lived in the same neighborhood, Hyde Park/Chicago, and constantly met in Ayer's pad plotting their future. I wish Hollyweird would do a real movie about the Red Diaper babies: Obama, Jarrett, David Axelrod, Carl Bernstein, etc whose parents were committed Marxist/Communists and passed on that poisonous philosphy of enslavement of the masses to their misguided kids. Now THAT would be a movie.

[–] Kroyall1962 10 years ago

You nailed it. These aging hippies like Redford have been trying to air brush history since the 60's. The Weathermen were a bunch of ignorant failures and there was no justification for what they did, as much as Redford would have us believe there was one.

Sadly, the lefties figured out a far more effective way to mold society which is gaining control of the institutions and levers of government power. On that score they have succeeded quite well. They made out good in the equation but the rest of us are suffering under their incompetence and corruption.

It would be nice to see Redford make an honest film (The Candidate was quite good back in the day) that portrays how the counterculture hippies who were all about "sticking it to the man" have now BECOME "the man" and are even more totalitarian than those they claimed to be against back in the 60's.

[–] smfilm 10 years ago

Kroyall1962, Redford definitely did NOT try to airbrush history on this one.... this movie says that the weathermen violence was wrong, but there was merit to their point... the whole movie is about how radicalization is the wrong road and family is the right one.... that giving up ones cause for the sake of family and life is OK

this movie is the complete opposite of what you are saying....

[–] mnbush 10 years ago

How old are you? Were you alive back then? A choice between going to war and probably dying or leaving the country? That's it: two choices. Is that an easy decision for you to make? Also, draft age was 18 but no one could vote until turning 21. Is that fair? Take away people's options and they get desperate. THINK about that.